I don’t understand people who feel alone. In particular, I don’t get people who edit gender love out of their memories, bitterly revising their past as if only the next moments of gratification and affirmation matter. If you miss something, you must have had something. And whether or not you still have it, was it so superficial that it left nothing to be savored by your mind? Was it a transient thing, something dead and done, no more than a dessert passing over taste buds? I like to think – I have to think – that full savoring includes as much in the aftermath of an action as in the doing of the deed. What is an experience if it simply begins and concludes with nerve endings? Venus fly traps do that.

I refuse to believe life is so shallow. Our depth as individuals varies, of course, and for any of us, an experience can range from purely physical to largely mental, psychological and emotional. And that last part makes it portable, does it not? It adds dimensions of creativity, imagination and anticipation. Especially when it comes to life’s priorities. Food and shelter may head that list, but at #3 it’s love that makes the world go round – the birds and the bees in one form or another. No, I’m not thinking like a slam-bam-thankyou-ma’am man. Allow me to go Freudian for a moment and ask you: is sex an aspect of love or is love an aspect of sex? Don’t be too sure the answer is obvious. Freud is enjoying a comeback, and if I substitute the word sexuality for sex, the answer becomes more comprehensive. Gender-specific styles of attraction from cosmetics to fashion, gender preferences and tastes from colors to shapes, gender strategies of thought and expression from rational to emotional – in short, those million-year-old evolutionary instincts – all continue to thrive in commerce and culture no matter how many dads stay home to raise children or glass ceilings are shattered in the jungle. We simply don’t relate or communicate asexually in our interactions, be they men’s locker rooms or baby showers. Gender identities are loaded with tribal rules, and so membership is in some way sexual whether you are a virgin spinster still getting her hair done at age 85 or a practicing mink under the covers each night.

Quality control plays large when it comes to mate selection. Consciously or not, we hone our optimum appeal as well as what attracts us, even before puberty. In that sense, I think everyone has a god or goddess in their garden, a fantasy ideal – though, as it happens, I really do have a Greek goddess statue in my garden. Mine became a metaphor for my actual inamorata in writings, and I’m somewhat amazed at how readily readers took to that. Even friends I don’t think of as poetic sometimes ask about her. The questions almost always come off-channel, which seems to suggest that the inquisitor is whispering about a secret part of themselves.

But it’s a secret common to everyone who ever conceived a mate in their imagination. Love and passion. Right there after food and shelter. I read research once that claimed adults have sexually related thoughts on average every nine minutes. You wouldn’t think something so obsessively a part of our makeup would be shrouded in shame and guilt. On the other hand, it makes sense that something so competitive and central would foster facades, pretenses, manipulations and denials. And I’ll bet you’re still thinking about that nine-minute average. It’s gotta include some grunt male mentalities whose imagination hits a brick wall after the primal urge delivers. Just nerve endings – half a loaf. Don’t be a grunt mentality. Most of us can probably hold our own with something more than a sexual twinge every nine minutes. And if you wanna be a lucid fantasizer who emotes in Technicolor, keep a statue in the garden.

For such apostles of love, passion is always new and nuanced. Foreplay is more or less constant in their romantic view of life. No grunt mentalities, no nine-minute breaks. They revel in it all, and it all consciously connects. Even raw intimacy profoundly magnifies the fleeting delivery of the grunt mentality into exquisite detail for them: …the moment when love’s sweet sting paralyzes the senses and the heart thunders…erogenous outposts tingling…time stopping for the rich rush of heaven that surges in to fill the void…soaring higher and higher…reaching for escape velocity…gravity thinning to an erotic tease of carnality…the golden pinnacle of eagerness touched, promising forever as the tsunami crests…daring to fly, resisting, resisting…until desire surrenders to ecstasy! And then the soul-igniting pleasure of release and relief as the wave cascades down, down, down to spend itself on a warm shore, gliding with a joy that cleanses all stress and wipes the sands smooth again. With one mighty detonation, the heart resumes its tempo, oxygen saturates every cell of the body, and in the absolute calm the meaning of life becomes perfectly clear. Why they live, why they love, and why they fall asleep in each other’s arms.

As for those questions about my statue, I’d describe the peerless beauty of the Goddess in my Garden, but then you’d know nothing about her. Peaches and pearls evoke some of her allure. And the intricacies within her defy description, but she’s eclectic. More than I ever thought possible, we think alike in core ways. Like mine, her instincts grasp the intimacy between truth and perfection. So, if you haven’t done so, I suggest you put a god or goddess statue in your garden. Then get on with your life. And the next time you feel lonely, re-read this and consult your personal memories and imagination. “Time and tide wait for no man.” Or woman. It’s a nine-minute appointment you shouldn’t miss.

Six photos below and a video link make up this month’s optics. The photos include #1-3 nature shots from biking, hiking and kayaking shots. #4 is one I dug out after a phone call from my adopted cuz. Wampus, I call her (she calls me Treesqueak) gnawed on my finger one day in a wagon, and ever after my father always announced her coming as, “Run, Tom, here comes the cannibal.” She is the most tenured of my living childhood playmates on this Earth and one of the funniest people I’ve ever known. We communicate by smoke signal when the wind is right, but I’m never sure where she’s coming from. If I stick my finger in the wind, what will that tell me? After the episode in the wagon, it points in three directions. And photos #5-6 are from something called Town Green, a cluster of small lakes right in the middle of Maple Grove. #7 is the video taken from a public library veranda a little above the Town Green bandshell, peninsula and said trails. Just click the baby picture of me to see it.

Thomas "Sully" Sullivan